Fresh from a big win in the uber-competitive Label/Artist Services category at the Music Week Awards in May, AWAL is riding high, with campaigns for CMAT, Djo, Jungle, Little Simz, Laufey and more turning heads – and doing huge numbers – around the world. To share the secrets behind their success, Music Week meets UK MD Matt Riley and SVPs Victoria Needs and Sam Potts…
Words: James Hanley Photos: Kyla Gordon-Miller
In the arms race to target superfans, AWAL holds a secret weapon in its midst. One of the Sony-owned firm’s fastest-rising acts, CMAT, is an authority on the music industry’s buzzword of the hour.
“She’s phenomenal at that because of her backstory,” grins AWAL SVP Victoria Needs. “She was a Bombay Bicycle Club superfan – so much so that the band knew of her.”
The depth of the Irish singer-songwriter’s fandom became public knowledge last year when she spent the majority of a radio interview raving about the indie rockers instead of promoting her latest single, leading to a wholesome social media exchange with her heroes.
“Can you be our radio plugger?” the band tweeted, prompting CMAT to quip, “I’ve been doing it for 13 years, why would I stop now?” in response.
The 28-year-old has tapped into her first-hand experience to strengthen her bond with her own followers via her #sinceremat newsletter.
“It’s a long piece of prose from the artist’s voice that goes into superfans’ inboxes every week and they devour it from start to finish,” explains Needs’ fellow AWAL SVP Sam Potts. “It is completely unfiltered. It’s not through a platform, it’s as direct a communication as you can get and we can see that connection through open rates.”
“She understands what it is like to be a fan, so she treats them with the value they deserve,” says Needs. “It’s so important. I think we have to respect 14 to 15-year-old girls as the most powerful people in the music business.”
After making an impression at this year’s BRIT Awards, where she was up for International Artist Of The Year, CMAT received further props for her second LP Crazymad, For Me (12,474 sales, according to the Official Charts Company), which has made the 12-strong shortlist for the 2024 Mercury Prize.
“The CMAT journey continues,” declares MD Matt Riley, joining his colleagues for an in-depth chat with Music Week. “She’s a force of nature.”
“She’s also a prime example of an AWAL artist,” suggests Needs. “She’s a unique visionary who tells stories, and they’re the kind of artists that are deeply embedded in our culture and what we do here. We’re exceptionally proud of her. She is my hero, I love her to pieces.”
AWAL was well represented at the BRITs, with Jungle picking up the award for Group Of The Year and Little Simz also nominated in several categories.
“It was the most nominations we’ve had and it’s a real testament to the work our artists do,” says Potts. “Hopefully we’ll be there for many years to come.”
Awards recognition is fast becoming a habit for AWAL, which triumphed in the Label/Artist Services category at May’s Music Week Awards following a stellar year that saw success for clients such as Tom Misch, Little Simz, Djo, Laufey, Grentperez, The Beaches, Lovejoy and Jungle.
“It’s a funny one because, pre-Sony acquisition, I think we would have probably pushed to get into the record label category,” muses Riley. “We feel like we’re in quite a unique position – somewhere between an artist services company and a label – but the bottom line is we were really happy. Who knows what happens next time? But I think we’ve had a good 12 months and it’s nice to get the nod.”
We meet the UK leadership triumvirate at Sony Music’s cutting-edge base in King’s Cross. Its $430 million acquisition of AWAL was rubber-stamped in 2022, giving the latter’s roster access to an expanded network of resources and partnerships around the world. Alongside Kobalt Neighbouring Rights, AWAL became a division within Sony’s suite of independent artist and label services offerings, which is also boosted by The Orchard.
“We’re part of Sony globally,” stresses Riley. “We’re not part of Sony UK, so we’re not in that structure. Whilst we’re in this building and collaborate a lot with the people in here, our reporting lines in the business structure are into America and global. Therefore, the P&L is global.”
Riley, who reports to AWAL COO Paul Hitchman, is a company man through and through, having spent a decade with the firm after cutting his teeth at drum & bass indie Hospital Records. He has been responsible for signing artists that have reached more than a billion streams including Bruno Major, Rex Orange County and Tom Misch, as well as supporting the development of global artists Eloise, Lovejoy, MorMor, Shay Lia and The Wombats.
“We tend to measure ourselves by how an artist’s doing in their entire career, rather than accolades and chart positions,” he notes. “But I think we’re now up to 26 artists that have gone from nought to a billion streams via AWAL and that record is pretty much up there with anyone.”
Needs’ Music Week debut came as a “sparky” teenager back in 1997 after she called in to BBC Saturday morning TV series Live & Kicking. She cheekily asked the then boss of Sony Music UK, who was a guest on the show, for a job, leading to her first industry role (“Music Week had a little bit about 16-year-old me in there”).
Three decades on, she is a major label veteran, having served with Warner Music, EMI and Sony, prior to joining AWAL in 2020, initially as VP of international marketing. Needs reflects proudly on AWAL’s point of difference.
“When an artist walks through the door, we ask them what it is that they want to achieve and what they need to help deliver that,” she says. “We can build bespoke set-ups for what they need to grow. We can adapt more quickly because we are less beholden to ways of doing things, or bigger structures that might be in place.”
Former Columbia head of radio promotions Sam Potts’ backstory is also newsworthy, both as co-founder of YGN (Young Guns Network) for young people in the industry and founder of music tech event concept Buzz Jam. He joined AWAL in 2019 as VP, promotion, while Riley was head of A&R, before the duo were elevated with Needs in 2023.
“Having open-minded major label people join at the right time throughout our history has been fantastic, it brings that fierceness and ambition,” enthuses Riley. “With the three of us, you have marketing, A&R and promo, and it’s just super-connected. We talk every day about how we should change things and what we should mix up, and I think that’s how we want to lead. I think we’re quite good at diminishing each other’s egos.”
“And we’re all happy to poke into each other’s areas and challenge each other,” points out Needs. “These two are a lot of fun; it’s a pleasure and a privilege to work with them every day. I also feel proud to be part of the wider team and culture – we have some really incredibly talented executives across the business who are not afraid of driving change and facilitating it. It’s exciting to come to work, debate what’s coming next and plan campaigns.”
Covering partnerships as well as promotions, Potts notes his role is more expansive than when he first made the switch.
“AWAL has always had an entrepreneurial mindset – it was the fire that grew it in the first place and I immediately felt that flowing through the business,” he smiles. “We’re making sure that anybody that comes in here is that kind of person and we use that to fuel our expansion and strategy.”
Potts circles back to the firm’s international perspective.
“A day in the life of any one of my team here could be, for example, speaking to a DSP in Korea, or speaking to our colleagues in Germany about a partnership, and then I could be speaking to a head of music at a radio station here,” he says “Promotional avenues and opportunities can come from anywhere on any platform – and many of them are global.”
“Our counterparts in the US are Ben Akinbola, Pete Giberga and Bianca Bhagat, and we love working with them,” affirms Needs. “We speak to them every day and that relationship with the US is hugely impactful for artists.”
Taking into account the length of his tenure, Riley is the perfect spokesperson to tackle the evolution of AWAL.
“AWAL originally stood for Artists Without A Label and was a way to get on iTunes if you weren’t signed,” he recalls. “It was this place where artists put records out on a 30-day rolling [contract] and then got signed. I remember at the time being like, ‘Why are we not trying to hold onto some of these acts?’”
In tandem with the rise of streaming and the aforementioned breakthroughs, AWAL found its niche in artist development.
“Gradually, A&R moved more into the middle of what this company is and helped lead it,” continues Riley. “Rather than just being a marketing service, it started to become all the things a record label is. Artist development really started working for us, and because AWAL was a modern company – built, almost, for the streaming era – it led to a lot of opportunities and possibilities.”
Moreover, Riley is confident that AWAL is no longer seen simply as a stepping stone to a major deal.
“We’ve seen artists like Little Simz, like Tom Misch, sign one record a time to us and re-sign to us,” he says. “We’ve seen other artists leave and not necessarily have as great results elsewhere. We never want our artists to leave, but we want them to succeed still – it’s just a shame that sometimes you don’t keep that journey going. But more and more, we’re super-confident that we can do long deals or short deals, and the artists will see the value.”
The MD considers the question of whether AWAL is now a destination for ambitious acts.
“Obviously, we can’t lock off everything,” he says. “It’s really competitive, but we go head-to-head with the majors and often come out with the artist because we’re far more flexible in what we can offer.”
Yet as the services sector matures, fresh hurdles have inevitably emerged. Riley shares an illuminating analogy when describing the current state of play in the market – likening it to the rise of player power in football.
“It’s gone from label power to artist power,” he opines. “You’re seeing across the board – at major labels, artist services, whatever – the deals are now shorter, but you have to show up and deliver. AWAL has always had the philosophy that artists have freedom, and if you’re going to give them freedom, they might not always decide what you want them to.”
Riley has a simple solution: to focus only on what AWAL is doing.
“We think deeply about ourselves; I don’t think it’s helpful to get too obsessed with what anyone else is doing,” he says. “We don’t want loads and loads of repertoire, we want the right repertoire, which is contrary to what distribution companies tend to do.”
Taking on fewer artists does not necessarily have to equate to slower growth, however.
“It’s all metrics,” shrugs Riley. “You could have 100 artists doing 10 million streams, or you can have one artist doing a billion streams… That’s rough maths, but you know what I mean!”
Little Simz, who inked a deal with AWAL in 2018 while retaining the rights and releases through her own Age 101 imprint, continues to provide a prime example of the model’s limitless potential. The partnership yielded the rapper’s biggest-selling album to date in 2021’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (74,056 sales), which peaked at No.4 on the UK chart. She also landed a plum Pyramid Stage slot at this year’s Glastonbury.
“I found it emotional watching it,” says Riley. “There’s still lots to come in the Little Simz story, but that was enormously fulfilling. You have to credit Paul Hitchman, who signed Simz to AWAL, and we’ve fulfilled her journey by backing her up and trying to do things in the way that Simbi wants to do them.”
“We trust them creatively,” surmises Potts. “That underpins it.”
The quickfire release of Simz’s fifth studio album No Thank You, which dropped in December 2022 having been announced just a week prior, sums up the relationship in a nutshell.
“The music came in and she said, ‘We want to put this out in five weeks,’” says Riley. “Of course, that’s not the optimum plan, but we do it because we’re AWAL and we want to fulfil what the artist really wants. We want them to be the best they can be, but ultimately, they’re the boss and we’re not ‘no’ people, we’re, ‘Yes, how can we make this happen?’”
Simz’s Worthy Farm set was far from the only Glastonbury moment that let the team enjoy the fruits of their labours – Jungle topping the bill on the West Holts stage offered a similar buzz.
“It was wicked, because we all work so hard,” says Riley. “Those moments are probably more gratifying than plaques.”
Nevertheless, the band’s BRIT Award and live performance of Back On 74 at this year’s ceremony still packed a punch.
“That would have been the first time many people watching that show would have seen Jungle and I think you only need to see how that performance set off yet another chain of events that built Back On 74 into the behemoth that it came to be,” says Potts. “We worked closely with Meta on the campaign, so they really supported us with growing that [song] around the world.”
The gold-selling Back On 74 (458,727 sales) was the dance act’s first UK Top 20 single and went viral thanks to its iconic one-shot music video, which inspired a TikTok dance craze despite breaking all the rules in the book.
“We’ve talked to TikTok about it and they were like, ‘That particular piece of content is absolutely the opposite to all of the best practices to make a track go viral’, but that’s the magic, right?” remarks Needs. “It’s like we’re putting the kindling around the fire, getting the groundwork done and then the audience will spark it, and then we come along and pour the oil on top and explode it.”
The trio also point proudly to Laufey’s breakthrough, smiling at the memory of May’s sold-out Royal Albert Hall show.
“We have huge ambitions for her,” says Needs. “The foundations are there for a seriously superstar-level artist to come through, everywhere from Beijing to the Philippines.”
Needs also emphasises that AWAL is not blind to the fact that the audiences decide now.
“We have no ego about that,” she says. “We’re absolutely there to back what the fans want and when we see those opportunities, we capitalise on them.”
Another recent case in point is Djo, aka Stranger Things actor Joe Keery, whose Top 5 smash End Of Beginning (604,671 sales) came out in 2022, but didn’t take off until earlier this year.
“When the Djo record went huge, a) it’s an incredible record and was getting used by people in a certain way, but b) it also does help that he’s quite a big actor and people can instantly go, ‘Oh, I know who that is,’” says Riley. “We have to link that story – and then you’ve got the moment.”
“In a very short amount of time, we drove it from a record that had done very well and notched up millions of streams, but had been out for a couple of years, to a Spotify global No.1,” beams Potts. “That was a total whirlwind. The speed at which a global hit can happen is pretty breathtaking and you need to be able to communicate between different countries and teams really quickly, because the audience goes lightning quick.”
While Riley details how AWAL leant on Sony’s resources “a little bit” on the Djo campaign, Needs believes it speaks volumes about the strength of AWAL’s reinforced offering.
“It was really good validation,” she says. “We know that we can deliver these massive global hits, but it was great to go out there and show everybody else. My previous job was working with Sony internationally, so I’m very lucky that I have so many people around the world I can phone up and go, ‘I just want to triple-check my Philippines plan’. On Djo, where we were moving super-fast, it was really great to have that back-up.”
After a couple of years under the Sony umbrella, Riley thinks things are working out just fine.
“Since coming to Sony, it’s been great to be acknowledged as the standalone thing that we are,” he says. “On the one hand, they haven’t messed with us and our model. They bought us for what we were doing and Lonny [Olinick, US-based CEO] is trusted to run this business. But being in this building brings fantastic energy and we’re grateful to be here and be around the labels.”
Besides, AWAL is a constant work in progress, concludes Riley.
“There’s so much to do: AWAL has not finished its journey and even how you work with artists in 2024 is up for grabs,” he says. “The three of us are really enjoying that challenge.”
“Everyone here has a real opportunity,” finishes Needs. “Historically, AWAL has had an influence on the wider industry and I think we can do that again…”
